page_title: Lawrence Welk
section_title: Early career
hierarchical_section_title: Lawrence Welk / Early career
caption_attribution_description: Publicity photo of musician Lawrence Welk.
context_page_description: Lawrence Welk was an American musician, accordionist, bandleader, and television impresario, who hosted The Lawrence Welk Show from 1955 to 1982. His style came to be known as "champagne music".
  In 1996, Welk was ranked #43 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.
context_section_description: On his 21st birthday, Welk left the family's farm to start his career in music. During the 1920s, he performed with the Luke Witkowski, Lincoln Boulds, and George T. Kelly bands before he started his own orchestra. He led big bands in North Dakota and eastern South Dakota. These included the Hotsy Totsy Boys and later the Honolulu Fruit Gum Orchestra. His band also played for radio station WNAX in Yankton, South Dakota. In 1927, he graduated from the MacPhail School of Music in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
  During the 1930s, Welk led a traveling big band that played dance tunes and "sweet" music. At first, the band traveled around the country by car. They were too poor to rent rooms, so they usually slept and changed clothes in their cars. At an engagement at the William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh, a dancer said that Welk's band's sound was as "light and bubbly as champagne," which is where the term "Champagne Music" came from. Welk described his band's sound, saying "We still play music with the champagne style, which means light and rhythmic. We place the stress on melody; the chords are played pretty much the way the composer wrote them. We play with a steady beat so that dancers can follow it."
  Welk's big band performed across the country but mostly at ballrooms and hotels in the Chicago and Milwaukee areas. In the early 1940s, the band started to play at the Trianon Ballroom in Chicago, where they played for 10 years. His orchestra also played at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City during the late 1940s. Welk recorded a version of Spade Cooley's "Shame on You" with Western artist Red Foley in 1945. The record (Decca 18698) was #4 on Billboard's September 15 "Most Played Juke Box Folk Records" listing. From 1949 through 1951, the band had its own national radio program on ABC.
caption: Photo of Welk in Chicago, 1944.
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